Forum:Coronation Street 50th Anniversary press pack
GT Ever so slightly old news now, but when I wrote about it Friday night my internet stalled on me just as I was ready to submit. Stupid internet!! I don't know if you are aware of the 100 page Press Pack that has been released but it's a great resource that I know will be useful here. My favourite bit is the definitive Top 50 most appeared actors. On the face of it my previous prediction that 50 characters would have clocked up 1000 episodes by now was alomst correct - Jason Grimshaw became the 45th on Friday. alas though the list then drops rapidly and 50th place (Neville Buswell) only appeared in 805 episodes - so my prediction was way-off, afterall! Although Rita and Gail have swapped round, the members of the mock-up top 5 I did are (perhaps not surprisingly) unchanged - though Liz Dawn must have been in 5th place when she retired. The only current actor who first appeared prior to 2000 missing from the list is Peter Armitage so we ought to be able to keep the "actors who have appeared in 1000+ episodes (or even 900+) episodes" list correct permanently. Perhaps if someone contacted the Press Office and asks nicely they might even confirm who has had between 800 and 804 appearances. We already know Arthur Leslie clocked up 801 so it would be nice to have the list from 800 episode onwards. If we were going to do 800+ on this site, or even always keep it as a top 50, we would need to get Anthony Cotton's appearances list done pronto as, by my reckoning (based on "what links here"), he has clocked up around 780 now (unfortunately!) so will probably make it before the end of the year. I don't think Peter Armitage is anywhere near 800 yet, do you? He'd only clocked up 219 by the end of 1996 so I should imagine he is still some way off. Was Helen Flannigan always credited in her early years? It might also be problematic trying to establish her count, if she wasn't. I wish it had been a top 50 characters list. David and Sarah would both be much higher up the list, and with 701 to his name by the end of 1998, Nick has almost reached 1000 as well now. One of the other best finds I think in the Press Pack is perhaps the Who Has Lived Where section - which looks very comprehensive and would I know fill in some gaps in our knowledge (well, content anyway!). There are also DOB's and load of great stuff for us. Beware of errors. At one point it claims that the show started in 1961, while an interesting fact claims Ken had 25 women, which is one more than the complete list given elsewhere! It also appears to suggest Martin was living in 19B Rosamund Street while he was still living in 18A Victoria Street! There must be a mistake there somewhere?! I just went back to look for the 1961 error again. Whether the show started in 60 or 61 is actually irrelevant to the fact being given anyway - unless Hot Pot actually pre-dates Betty's arrival!? Another ammusing error is an asterisk by Martha's death - indicating it happenned off-screen! A bit of a confusing use of an asterisk for Roy and Hayley's first wedding too - while not a legal wedding maybe, it still went ahead! What are your views on Darren Barlow, Jayne Ogden, Dawn Yeats and Peter Clegg being listed as official Corrie births? And have we really not heard of any other babies born off-screen and never seen in the last 25 years? Not impossible I suppose but it just seems a little unlikely. Perhaps the point is that these four had their births announced very soon after they were born?? Oh and the Queen is not an HRH! Well Friday night I wrote that I'd "rabbited quite enough now" (I printed the screen to make it easier to retype) and I've written even more this time lol (partly because of things I've since noticed/worked out) so I shall stop now! TellyFan 01:31, September 27, 2010 (UTC) :The appearance numbers use Daran Little's totals, which we've spotted a few errors in, but they're a good indication of roughly how many times characters have appeared. Working on our marriages list just there, I noticed a few oversights on ITV's list, notably Albert and Alice's 1969 wedding. David 22:00, September 27, 2010 (UTC) ::Although most of the figures agree with Daran's, they have alterd Violet Carsons from 1148 to 1150, and Daran had Jack Walker down as 807, so unless they forgot about him his figure has also been officially revised so they appear to have been looked into a bit. As I said before "without watching all the episodes back, an 'all-time' list would never be 100% accurate - since we know from the DVD episodes that characters were credited/uncredited sometimes, despite their appearance or non-appearance in the episode." That being so, apart from obvious errors in the book, I'm not sure we should assume for definite that our figures are any more accurate than the 'official ones'. The count for Minnie is perhaps the best example. The 35th book had her at 1081 eps. The 40th book had her down to 986 - the figure they're still sticking to. It all goes wrong in 1969 where the new cumulative total is 18 less than the previous total added to her count for that year. Based on this, I took her actual figure to be 1001 eps by the end of 1975. Yet if we go to Margot Bryant's 'what links here' page, there is no way that Corriepedia credits her with as many episodes as that. So who's to say what figure is correct? Maybe the 1969 ep total was wrong in the book, instead of the cumulative total, and so 986 could be closer to the right figure than we think. If we created an "actors who have appeared in 900+ (or whatever) episodes" page base on the new list, I've no doubt there would be erors, but at least they would be "official errors", and that surely has to be better than having no such list at all? ::As for the weddings, well that's another embarassing howler, isn't it - did no-one think to cross reference with the books?! This press pack was released to worldwide press for goodness sake!! Speaking of weddings, I never noticed till last weekend actually that the 40th book doesn't even make clear which weddings went ahead and which ones didn't. Not an error exactly, but certainly misleading - a shame none of these sorts of thing were corrected for the updated reprint the following year. Oh well! TellyFan 01:40, October 4, 2010 (UTC) :::I would be very much opposed to creating a page which was not only based upon possible inaccurate "official" data but also flatly contradicted data held on other pages of this site. We either have faith in our own research or we don't bother researching it at all. In time, we may reach the point where can say with hand on heart what is right and what is wrong but now is too early.--Jtomlin1uk 10:28, October 4, 2010 (UTC) ::::I definitely agree with that. As I said above, they're interesting in a "rough estimate" way thats about it. David 12:00, October 4, 2010 (UTC) ::::I understand your concerns, John. Are we not though being a bit arrogant if we say our figures are right and theirs are wrong. I have no idea why Violet Carsons figure has been revised. Maybe it is down to some proper research or maybe the person typing the list wasn't a touch-typer and so was typing a slightly misremembered memory from a list they'd looked at a few moments earlier and never bothered to double check the figures afterwards! Either way, who are we to state that her actual count was 1155 as if there is no area for dispute? I know I did it myself when I said "we know" that Arthur Leslie had 801. In truth I no more know this than I used to "know" that the figure was 807. ::::We can't 100% rely on ITNsource's figures - I know from researching on another programme that there are inaccuracies in their data - and for a great many years now the TVTimes has only done a weekly cast list, which has got to be of limited use, also. At least we know Daran Little had the privellege of actually getting to watch every single episode for himself. This doesn't mean our own research is invalid and that we shouldn't bother researching it at all - that's a defeatist attitude. Afterall, without the research done by people here, how could we get annoyed that Anthony Cotton has almost become one of the 50 most seen actors of all time?! Perhaps in this case ignorance was bliss lol but for those that DO like him they'd have no inkling at all how close he is to that list without the work that has been done here. ::::There's nothing wrong with having "faith in our own research", but it shouldn't be blind faith - if nothing else simply because we are human and are just as prone to errors as those who have complied the official data. I don't know what the answer is here, but we don't currently have a list of that kind and it seems a shame to dismiss their list alltogether - can we not just add a note explaining the discrepancies? I just think that unless we ever get the privellege of seeing every episode, achieving 100% accurcy is an impossible dream and we should make the best of whatever data we can get hold of. ::::Perhaps you'd be happier with a shorter list e.g. 2000+ episodes?? TellyFan 12:15, October 4, 2010 (UTC) Please read my reply again - at no point did I say that we were right and they were wrong. All I meant was that the drilled-down data we have is in quite a few cases different but the researches we managed to do so far show situations when we are right and others when Granada are right. In simple terms, no one has yet been proven right all the time and while we may upload data to this site not knowing it's wrong, I'm hard-pushed to remember one piece of data that I've put on here knowing that it's incorrect with the sole exception of the 1964 episodes and tranmission dates on which even Granada were confused and which was only corrected last week. There are just too many discrepencies such as Emily Nugent in 1969 where Granada claims 85 appearances but we can only account for 73 and in the 38 episodes from that year that David and I have watched so far (over a third of year's total) on not one occasion have we found additional appearances previously unknown to us by this character.--Jtomlin1uk 16:23, October 4, 2010 (UTC) :OK John, I'm sorry I probably took the 'faith in our research' point and took its meaning a bit far. I was also though at the same time debating in my head whether it is right, for example to say 'Ena Sharples appeared in 1185' on her list of appearances page when we don't necessarily know it to be true. It sounds like fact when it might not be. But then I suppose what's the alternative? We could qualify it by putting 'It is believed...' or somesuch, but equally if we did that with every single uncertain piece of information the site would start to become a mess and not seem as authoritative as we hope it to be. So firstly, I should have made clearer what I was thinking (believe it or not I try not to labour my points too much!), but in any case its probably better we leave it for people to work out for themselves that it is our reasoned, considered opinions rather than outright facts. :"I'm hard-pushed to remember one piece of data that I've put on here knowing that it's incorrect". Now that's a very good point and I see that that makes total sense. Would it be stupid then to suggest a compromise? What if we put the list up, and corrected it where we know, or think we know it is wrong, by e.g. changing Violet Carsons figure to 1155? How does that sit with you? :The thing I can't fathom is how they got the figures so wrong in the first place?! There's not much that annoys me more than reading things in books (or on the net) that are presented to us as if they are the truth, when anyone with half a brain can see that it's wrong. Especially when you're putting stuff in a book that you're expecting people to pay for, they should bloomin' well take more care! Rant over!TellyFan 17:27, October 4, 2010 (UTC)